Solar Power Solutions for Mobile Computing.

Unpacking the gadget bag!

We (that’s me, VIA and a PR company) had tried to plan a crossing-the-line press meeting today but as it turns out, everyone is at IFA and no-one was available. It was a little disappointing but seeing as it was raining, I’m not bitter! I took the chance to jump on a train home and start the process of writing-up the project. The first think to do was unpack those smelly socks and make sure I had everything listed for anyone that might be interested in the future. The gadget bags were the most important bit unless you want to see a picture of my wash bag. No? Thought not.

It was a well-refined 10-day gadget bag I had with me on the Solar-UMPC tour so as I unpacked a few hours ago, I took the opportunity to update the pack list (Google spreadsheet available here.) and take photos of the solar setup and the computing setup I used when I was out.

First, here’s the solar setup. Most of it is explained in previous posts (see this one and this how-to for example) but maybe this picture helps to simplify how I was using the devices.

The second picture shows the computing setup including the all-important gadget of the week, the USB LED lamp! The mobile phone and UMPC worked well together as a communication suite. The phone took primary role as email reader, music/radio and twitter interface with the UMPC performing the more creative roles with the map updates, blog entries, photo editing and geo-tagging.

The computing set-up was really good and apart from reducing cables and improving software, there isn’t much i’d change in terms of components. The solar setup will defaintely need improving though and as I mentioned in this post about the inefficiencies, I have already made some notes about how I would improve it. I’ll be going through my recommendations for the computing and solar setups in later posts.